J'!t1 THE GLORY OF CgRI$T AS GOD-MAN. fcllo a creatures at.so low and unworthy a rate, as too often we treat the Son of God, who died for us and is exalted to the Fa- ther's throne ; Rev. iii. 27. and iv. 21. It has pleased the Father that all the fulness of the godhead should &yell bodily in the man Jesus, that there should be aper- sonal union between God and man, that so the human nature being a part of the complex person of the Mediator, it might be assumed into the complex object of worship : and indeed if we do not include the human nature of Christ in the honours which we pay him, I think we can be hardly said to give him any of that special honour in a proper sense, to which the Father has advanced him by this union : And we seem to deprive his sacred person also of that peculiar glory which he received from the Father by way of gift or reward for his sufferings. For it is not the divine nature properly, but the human which endured the sufferings, and is entitled to the reward. Whatsoever sub- lime honours therefore we pay to the pure godhead of Christ, while we have no actual regard to the man Jesus who is united to the Deity, we seem to neglect that peculiar honour due to him, for which we have perhaps the most frequent precepts and ex- amples in the New Testument, that is, the honour due to him as God-man and Mediator. I grant that we must not separate the divine nature of Christ from the human, while we address him with religious worship ; for the mere man abstracted from godhead doth not seem a pro- per object, nor justly capable of it, according to the rules of scripture : Yet while we direct our devotions to his whole sacred person, our forms of address may and ought to have frequent respect to the past sorrows and the present glories and powers of his human nature : This is to worship him, according to the pat- terns of worship paid to him, which stand recorded in scripture for our imitation. See Rev. i. 5, 6. and v. 9. and vii. 9, 10. All the honour which we pay to the man Jesus, must re- dound to the glory of the indwelling godhead, and to the honour of the Father ; yet we should look upon ourselves under special obligations, to pay particular honour and love to whom honour and love are due, and not forget the interest of the hu- man nature of Christ in the smart of his sufferings, and in the glory of his exaltation, when we pay religious worship to our Emmanuel, or God with us. See these things more discoursed at large in my " Third, Dissertationon the Trinity." Such raised sentiments as these concerning the power and dignity of our exalted Redeemer, may discover to us the sense and beauty of several expressions of scripture which before were unobserved or unknown ; and may make it appear with what propriety the scripture speaks concerning the rewards and recom- pences which Christ received, on the account of his sufferings:
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